Sharing Sovereignty: Models for autonomy within climate-changed futures

[essay text to be accompanied by photographs and diagrams]

In the model of the Westphalian state, national sovereignty is a spatially exclusive construct: where the line of one territory ends, another begins. The hard lines on our maps leave no room for negotiation. However contemporary nation-states are not the only models for sovereignty: in many indigenous cultures, including the island-nations of the Pacific, sovereignty could be multiple, shared, temporal, or overlapping. Claims to fishing zones or productive forests were based on use and management rather than fixed claims, and communities migrated over time in response to shifting resource availability. While most populations around the world have become sedentarized through forces of colonization and industrialization, climate change threatens this spatial stability. As homelands such as low-lying coral atolls and hurricane-prone coastlines become increasingly threatened by climate change, the coming era of climate chaos is likely to be marked by massive migrations. As recent events in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the middle east suggest our current, discrete global system of nation-states fails to accommodate (and violently blockades) this need for mobility. Taking on Cruz + Forman’s call for citizenship as a “creative act” this essay explores alternative models of shared sovereignty for displaced nations, exploring Pasifika communities (Pacific Islanders in Aotearoa/New Zealand) as a current and future case for overlapping autonomies.

As Harald Welzer and others have documented, climate change is already causing cross-border migration. Those most threatened by climate change are the low-lying island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Maldives which risk being eviscerated entirely by rising seas and warming waters. If their islands are submerged, what political options exist for these displaced nations?

The displacement of place-based indigenous cultures necessitates the creation of new forms of sovereignty and self-determination. While we typically think of sovereignty is a binary system, precedents exist for considering sovereignty as a a more fluid spectrum; “borders within borders, where spaces are circumscribed and assigned specific powers and functions.”

Zones; reservations; enclaves; embassies; UN peacekeeping compounds; military bases;

Aotearoa/New Zealand case: Due to the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand already observes a certain extent of shared sovereignty between the indigenous M?ori and settler P?keh?. The climate-displaced from Polynesian nations including Tuvalu and Tokelau are close cousins of the M?ori, providing an inroad for exploring alternative sovereignties in the spaces of Aotearoa.

How Pasifika create space in NZ now, and what is missing (autonomy, secular [magic] space, place-based histories)
Existing models of shared sovereignty in Aotearoa/NZ

Cooperative models: Moerewa (Maori), Wellington Fiji community,
NZ bi/multiculturalism, ethnopolitics
Past attempts at M?ori sovereignty: Aotearoa passports / mine protests / Bastion Point / Treaty of Waitangi

Based on the above models, the essay closes by exploring alternative models for sovereignty in Aotearoa/NZ in the context of climate-displaced Pacific Islanders

Shared sovereignties/ Autonomous enclaves/ Autonomous bodies/ Temporal territories/ Jurisdictional gradients/ Acting (performing) autonomy

As the glaciers that divide territories and the seas that define coastlines move from fixed to fluid in the collective global imaginary, the Westphalian concept of discrete national territories continues to unravel. Alternative models for sharing sovereignty not only help ensure the climate-changed future of displaced indigenous nations; they also suggest a new model of governance and cultural self-determination in the uncertain spaces of the Anthropocene.